Dead and Gone
   Andrew Vachss
  2000 Borzoi Book/Alfred a. Knopf, NY USA
   ISBN: 0375411216


It's not an unusual job for Burke to act as a middleman in an exchange of cash for a kidnapped child. This time the only things exchanged are bullets & they're all meant for Burke.

In Andrew Vachss' Dead and Gone, ex-con, career criminal & urban man-for-hire Burke, so named by his druggie mommy before she drifted off for another fix, comes face to face with his demons, his death & his dreadful past.

Here at last, Burke must outwit himself, must surrender to a force, a pattern & the death of his beloved partner. He must also face the death of his loneliness which, strangely, is the hardest of all to overcome.

Reading an Andrew Vachss book is to race through a tunnel at top speed, briefly catching sight of stations you think you're going to stop at only to be hurtled on to the next. With tense jolts Vachss drives us relentlessly through every intersection & offers us station halts for memories long since forgotten; or hoped so.

There is a lean & hungry feel to Vachss' writing & yet, for the first time, I note a bubbling up of humor. Gem is a gem & a perfect foil for Burke. Together they tussle with each other, with each other's demons & with the patterns that have had Burke dead & gone from his old stamping grounds.

There is only one crack, well two actually, in Burke's armor. If it has to do with brutalizing children, Burke is your man. If it has anything to do with Pansy, then Burke is your enemy, a deadly & merciless one.

If you haven't read any of Andrew Vachss' hair-raising philosophical thrillers I do encourage you to do so: Flood; Strega; Blue Belle; Hard Candy; Blossom; Sacrifice; Shella; False Allegations; Down in the Zero, Born Bad; Footsteps of the Hawk; Safe House; Choice of Evil & Everybody Pays.

Andrew Vachss has also written two collections of short stories & Another Chance to Get It Right: A Children's Book for Adults. His work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire & the New York Times.
(11/19/00)

Rebecca